SPRING ALWAYS COMES

A quiet story, pleasant, but not very important. Nothing sensational or romantic happens to anyone, but the reader follows the stories of the members of a clergyman's family with a sense of knowing and liking them. There is the mother, who has never quite come to grips with herself, or understood her poet-idealist husband (who is known through the eyes of others); there is the son who dreams of far-off countries, and works in a lumber company in London; there is Margaret, who pushes off her too-patient lover, while she tries to remake the world; there is Cecily, who enjoys having her finger in other people's lives; and there is Jasmine, who writes a romantic novel and finds it interpreted as clever satire. England -- village and town life -- slight in plot structure --philosophical in mood. Better than anything she has written, except for Hostages to Fortune, still her best.